Atheist authors Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins will be in Houston this weekend. (Christian Witkin and Mike Cornwell)

Update: Richard Dawkins will also speak at a Rice University event that is free and open to the public at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 10. His talk, held in the Stude Concert Hall in the Shepherd School of Music’s Alice Pratt Brown Hall, is sponsored by Houston Enriches Rice Education (HERE). More information can be found on the Rice website.

Houston, a city that’s home to the largest churches in the country, will host big-name atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens during the three-day Texas Freethought Conventionthis weekend.

Dawkins will present Hitchens, who has been suffering from cancer, with the Freethinker of the Year award. Since he began treatment last summer, Hitchens has cancelled a number of recent appearances for health reasons, but organizers say the famed Vanity Fair writer and author still plans to attend.

“Dawkins and Hitchens are huge for us,” said Paul Mitchell, the organizer who started the state-wide convention three years ago. He has seen it multiply in size to the 600-plus crowd expected at the Hyatt in downtown Houston starting Friday.

The affiliation with these “atheist superstars” draws attention to the growing freethought movement in Texas, reminding everyone that just because it’s the Bible Belt doesn’t mean there aren’t non-believers making strides.

Dawkins, the biologist who wrote The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, and Hitchens, a fellow British writer who made headlines last year when Christians began a movement to pray for his health, may be the biggest names in new atheism, but they aren’t universally loved, even among freethinkers.

“There is a question over if they’re too militant,” said Mitchell, the San Antonio-based president of the Texas Freethought Convention. “Within the secular movement itself, there are so many different ways people approach their non-belief… A lot of atheists love Hitchens. There are atheists that despise Hitchens.”

Hitchens has argued that not only does God not exist, but that Christianity has not been good for the world throughout history. He has insulted everyone from George W. Bush to Mother Teresa.

During a sold-out speech in Houston last year, Dawkins referred to Christians who believe in creation accounts and Bible stories as “ignoramuses,” “scientific know-nothings” and “a tragic waste of life.”

“I am sorry to take a sledge hammer to so small and fragile a lot. We should be able to ignore them, but we cannot,” he said.

Supporters of the two famous British authors argue their defenses of science-based secular worldviews are what the state of Texas needs, especially as its Board of Education considers religiously influenced curricula.

“These people are really ecstatic that we can gather freethinkers here and prove that we aren’t some kid of backwoods state,” said Mitchell.